Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

Of all the men who joined the captain in the study on those Sundays — and the roster changed from week to week — it was McKenna who paid Luther the most attention. At first glance, it seemed welcome enough. He always thanked Luther when Luther brought him either a drink or a refill, whereas most of the men simply acted as if his servitude was their due and rarely acknowledged him at all. Upon entering the study, McKenna usually asked after Luther’s health, his week, how he was adapting to the cold weather. “You ever need an extra coat, son, you let us know. We usually have a few spares down at the station house. Can’t promise they’ll smell too fine, though.” He clapped Luther on the back.

He seemed to assume Luther was from the South and Luther saw no reason to dissuade him from the impression until it came up one late afternoon at Sunday dinner.

“Kentucky?” McKenna said.

At first Luther didn’t realize he was being addressed. He stood by the sideboard, filling a small bowl with sugar cubes.

“Louisville, I’m guessing. Am I right?” McKenna gazed openly at him as he placed a slice of pork in his mouth.

“Where I hail from, sir?”

McKenna’s eyes glimmered. “That’s the question, son.”

The captain took a sip of wine. “The lieutenant prides himself on his grasp of accents, he does.”

Danny said, “Can’t lose his own, though, uh?”

Connor and Joe laughed. McKenna wagged his fork at Danny. “A wiseacre since diapers, this one.” He turned his head. “So which is it, Luther?”

Before Luther could answer, Captain Coughlin raised a hand to him. “Make him guess, Mr. Laurence.”

“I did guess, Tom.”

“You guessed wrong.”

“Ah.” Eddie McKenna dabbed his lips with his napkin. “So, not Louisville?”

Luther shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Lexington?”

Luther shook his head again, felt the whole family looking at him.

McKenna leaned back, one hand caressing his belly. “Well, let’s see. You don’t have a deep enough drawl for Mis’sipi, tha’s fo’ sho’. And Gawgia is right out. Too deep for Virginia, though, and too fast, I think, for Alabama.”

“I’m guessing Bermuda,” Danny said.

Luther caught his eye and smiled. Of all the Coughlins, he had the least experience with Danny, but Avery had been right — you felt no lying in the man.

“Cuba,” Luther said to Danny.

“Too far south,” Danny said.

They both chuckled.

The gamesmanship left McKenna’s eyes. His flesh pinkened. “Ah, a bit a sport the lads are having now.” He smiled at Ellen Coughlin down the other end of the table. “A bit of sport,” he repeated and cut into his roast pork.

“So what’s the guess, Eddie?” Captain Coughlin speared a potato slice.

Eddie McKenna looked up. “I’ll have to give Mr. Laurence a bit more thought before I hazard any more idle conjecture on that point.”

Luther turned back to the coffee tray, but not before he caught another look from Danny. Not an entirely pleasant look, one bearing a hint of pity.

Luther shrugged into his topcoat as he came out onto the stoop and saw Danny leaning against the hood of a nut-brown Oakland 49. Danny raised a bottle of something in Luther’s direction, and when Luther reached the street he saw that it was whiskey, the good stuff, prewar.

“A drink, Mr. Laurence?”

Luther took the bottle from Danny and raised it to his lips. He paused, looking at him, making sure sharing a bottle with a colored was what the man wanted. Danny gave him a quizzical arch of his eyebrow, and Luther tilted the bottle to his lips and drank.

When Luther handed it back, the big cop didn’t wipe the bottle with his sleeve, just tilted it to his own lips and took himself a healthy snort. “Good stuff, uh?”

Luther remembered how Avery Wallace had said this Coughlin was a strange who did his own thinking. He nodded.

“Nice night.”

“Yeah.” Crisp but windless, the air a bit chalky with the dust of dead leaves.

“Another?” Danny handed the bottle back.

Luther took a drink, eyeing the big white man and his open, handsome face. A lady-killer, Luther bet, but not the kind to make it his life’s work. Something going on behind those eyes that told Luther this man heard music others didn’t, took direction from who knew where.

“You like working here?”

Luther nodded. “I do. You’ve a nice family, suh.”

Danny rolled his eyes and took another swig. “Think you could drop the ‘suh’ shit with me, Mr. Laurence? Think that’s possible?”

Luther took a step back. “What do you want me to call you then?”

“Out here? Danny’ll do. In there?” He gestured with his chin at the house. “I guess Mr. Coughlin.”

“What’s your complaint against ‘suh’?”

Danny shrugged. “It sounds like bullshit.”

“Fair enough. You call me Luther, then.”

Danny nodded. “Drink to it.”

Luther chuckled as he lifted the bottle. “Avery warned me you were different.”

“Avery came back from the grave to tell you I was different?”

Luther shook his head. “He wrote a note to his ‘replacement.’”

“Ah.” Danny took the bottle back. “Whatta you think about my Uncle Eddie?”

“Seems nice enough.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Danny’s voice was soft.

Luther leaned against the car beside Danny. “No, he doesn’t.”

“You feel him circling you in there?”

“I felt it.”

“You got a nice clean past, Luther?”

“Clean as most, I guess.”

“That ain’t too clean.”

Luther smiled. “Fair point.”

Danny handed the bottle over again. “My Uncle Eddie? He reads people better than any man alive. Stares right through their heads and sees whatever it is they don’t want the world to find out. They got a suspect in one of the station houses nobody can break? They call in my uncle. He gets a confession every time. Uses whatever it takes to get one, too.”

Luther rolled the bottle between his palms. “Why you telling me this?”

“He smells something he doesn’t like about you — I can see it in his eyes — and we took that joke in there too far for his comfort. He started thinking we were laughing at him and that’s not good.”

“I appreciate the liquor.” Luther stepped away from the car. “Never shared a bottle with a white man before.” He shrugged. “But I best be getting home.”

“I’m not working you.”

“You ain’t, uh?” Luther looked at him. “How do I know that?”

Danny held out his hands. “Only two types of men in this world worth talking about — a man who is as he appears and the other kind. Which do you think I am?”

Luther felt the whiskey swimming beneath his flesh. “You about the strangest kind I’ve come across in this city.”

Danny took a drink, looked up at the stars. “Eddie might circle you for a year, even two. He’ll take all the time in the world, believe me. But when he finally does come for you? He’ll have left you no way out.” He met Luther’s eyes. “I’ve made my peace with whatever Eddie and my father do to achieve their ends with plug-uglies and grifters and gunsels, but I don’t like it when they go after civilians. You understand?”

Luther placed his hands in his pockets as the crisp air grew darker, colder. “So you’re saying you can call off this dog?”

Danny shrugged. “Maybe. Won’t know until the time comes.”

Luther nodded. “And what’s your end?”

Danny smiled. “My end?”

Luther found himself smiling in return, feeling both of them circling now, but having fun with it. “Ain’t nothing free in this world but bad luck.”